Justifications for harsher punishments for hate crimes are right because they focus on the notion that hate crimes cause greater individual and societal harm. It is said that, when the core of a person's identity is attacked, the degradation and dehumanization is especially severe, and additional emotional and physiological problems are likely to result. Society then, in turn, can suffer from the disempowerment of a group of people. Furthermore, it is asserted that the chances for retaliatory crimes are greater when a hate crime has been committed.

It is unclear whether Pro has argued that racism or hate crimes should be punished more harshly. They are not the same. Hate crimes are crimes committed because the victim is a member of a certain social group. Racism is obviously discrimination based on race.

Racism should not be punished more harshly than other forms of discrimination because it is not inherently worse. Discrimination based on sex, religion, sexual orientation, etc. is just as harmful as racism.

Hate crimes should not be punished more harshly because the motivation of a criminal in committing an intentional act is unimportant to serving justice and cannot be accurately ascertained. The purpose of justice ought to be to compensate the victim and deter additional crime. Punishing someone more because of why they committed their crime for a certain reason does not help achieve either of these goals.

It is also impossible to tell if a hate crime was actually socially motivated. In a diverse community, people may commit crimes against members of different social groups all the time. Are we to randomly assume some crimes are worse because of who they were committed against? We cannot look into a criminal's mind and find the truth, so we would be stabbing in the dark. That's not a fair system of justice.

My opponent's supporting points seem rather weak. The purpose of the law is not to protect people's feelings, it's to protect them from violent acts by others. The crimes themselves are already punished, so my opponent is effectively arguing for thought crimes (thinking the wrong thing will committing a crime). I think we can see why that is absolutely unjust.

I support the utmost fairness to the individual, not the unjustified use of legal force to control people's thoughts in the name of improving an abstract "society."

I argue that racist hate crimes are right to be punished the way they are and more harshly if possible
it is all about majorities and minorities. In america white people are the majority but black people, Latino people and Asians are not. The fact that they are manoritys means they are more likely to be targeted for attack.
White people are not usally attacked for being white because they are the majority in the country and non-white people are more likely to be attacked because they are minority.
think about it, people don't kill heterosexuals for their sexual orientation. However, there have been cases where homosexuals were killed for their sexual orientation. Christians make up the majority in the country - they are not targeted for their religion

People are not treated the same because we are NOT the same. People have different religions, people have different sexual orientations, people have different ethnicities, etc If we were treated the same, there would be no hate crime, In the world.
It is called Majority rules, majority rights

The reason i choose racism over sexism and homophobia is because woman are an equal majority to men and homosexuals are able to hide they're sexuality. People of different races cannot hide they're skin color so they are more important because they are more targeted for hate.
please people for humanity vote pro